Theresa Heredia Crafts Captivating Chardonnays and Silky Pinots at Gary Farrell Winery

Walk through a city and you’ll notice distinct differences from one neighborhood to the next. In Manhattan, the creative energy of the Chelsea Gallery district is a different world from the soaring skyscrapers and hard-driving speed of the Financial District.

It’s the same in wine regions. The AVA of the Russian River Valley is a large expanse, and a stretch of several miles can make a big difference in vineyards – more ocean breeze, higher elevation, and distinctive soil variation. In fact the Russian River Valley has more soil types than France!

Theresa Heredia has been the winemaker at Gary Farrell winery since 2012. One of the aspects of Gary Farrell that attracted her is that the winery has no estate fruit but sources grapes from some of the best vineyards across the Russian River Valley.  She compares this to the role of “negociant” in Burgundy. Although Gary Farrell winery doesn’t own the vineyards, Theresa works closely with the vineyard managers, especially when it comes to picking decisions. She endeavors to have their fruit picked early to try to get good acidity and manage the alcohol.

She aspires for her wines to have Burgundian elegance and restraint while also showcasing the unique aspects of the Russian River Valley.  Theresa told us that she wants to make expressive wines that have a sense of place.  In a guided tasting for media, Theresa walked us through seven wines made from grapes sourced from various neighborhoods of the Russian River Valley. The distinct flavors and aromas of each wine was striking considering they all came from one AVA.

We started with three lively Chardonnays:

·         2017 Olivet Lane Vineyard Chardonnay – Santa Rosa Plains  /  Notes of ripe yellow apple dancing with vibrant lemons with a dash of minerality – a Chardonnay with bright flavors and good length  and refreshing acidity.

·         2017 Ritchie Vineyard Chardonnay – Laguna Ridge / Made from small bunches of grapes, this wine was very concentrated with lemon and floral aromas and a round mouthfeel with apple and pear – also with the lift of acidity.

·         2017 Rochioli Vineyard Chardonnay – Middle Reach  /  A lush Chardonnay with notes of caramel, baked apple and a dash of pineapple on the nose, on the palate more baked apple flavors along with a shot of acidity to lift the lushness.

Then we progressed to the silky Pinot Noirs:

·         2017 Bacigalupi Vineyard Pinot Noir – Middle Reach  / Classic Burgundian style Pinot with earthy notes along with the red fruit flavors – juicy yet complex wine. Theresa told us she does some whole cluster additions to this to add some tannin.

·         2017 Hallberg Vineyard Pinot Noir – Green Valley  / A tart cherry nose and black and red fruit on palate with white pepper on the black cherry midpalate and bright acid.

·         2017 McDonald Mountain Vineyard Pinot Noir – Sebastopol Hills  /  Rosemary and red fruit on the nose with bing cherries and baking spice on the palate. Theresa told us the cold temperatures in this vineyard produce lots of acidity in wines from here. She also noted that she does 40% whole cluster when fermenting this wine which adds some dusty tannins.

·         2017 Martaella Vineyard Pinot Noir – Santa Rosa Plains  / Black plum nose with loads of ripe cherry on the palate and refreshing acidity – this is a real crowd pleaser of a Pinot Noir.

Overall, I found the wines to be balanced with regard to alcohol, fruit, acidity, and tannin but fairly bursting with lively flavors.  Theresa Heredia is most assuredly a precise winemaker who brings a clear vision to the wines she creates.  We are all the better for it when we partake of her creations. 

TasteCamp 2011 Reveals Winning Ontario Wines

This spring a group of wine bloggers, primarily from the Northeastern U.S. and Eastern Canada, descended on the Niagara on the Lake wine region for the third annual TasteCamp. TC gives wine bloggers an intense weekend of wine tasting and education in wine regions that are not usually widely promoted. This year’s group was notably multilingual, as French Canadians joined the usual crowd of native English speakers.

On to the wines. I found a number of the white wines to be of very high quality. I enjoyed many Rieslings, most notably the single vineyard offerings from Thirty Bench. These had lovely minerality and lush tropical fruit flavors, a winning combination that I wholeheartedly recommend.

My wow wines of the trips were the Chardonnays. Being grown in a cold climate, the grapes achieve higher acidity than the same grapes from California, South Africa, or Australia, for example. It was this extra shot of acidity that brightened the classic Chardonnay flavors of apples and citrus and gave the wines a welcome liveliness. I am not the biggest fan of Chard, but these were very special. The offerings of Tawse Winery were most memorable.

Pinot Noir is another go-to grape for the Ontario winemakers, but I must say that many of these wines tasted green to me – did the grapes ripen adequately? To my palate, the answer was no. And yet, there were exceptions. Flat Rock Cellars did present some very pleasing Pinots, along with an interactive tour that included quizzes, and, most sensational, a sparkling wine that was not sabered, but axed! Very Canadian.

But no discussion of Ontario wine would be complete without mentioning their most famous offering: ice wine. Grapes are hand-picked after they have frozen on the vines. The juice that is pressed from these icy berries is thick and full of sugar. Once vinified, they are some of the world’s best dessert wines – and it is traditional to serve them chilled in cordial glasses. We tried dessert wines made from Vidal grapes (a common variety up north), from Riesling, and, most intriguing of all, one ice wine from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, which was a lovely pink-amber color and tasted of strawberries.

In all, TasteCamp 2011 gave us a very good foundation in the joys of Ontario wine. In addition, the Niagara on the Lake area offers lovely rolling countryside and fine dining: our group was most impressed by the succulent lamb shanks that were the entree of our excellent dinner at Treadwell Farm to Table Cuisine. Throw in a visit to the Falls, and you have a perfect weekend wine destination from the northeast.

A Sip in Time

This month’s Wine Blogging Wednesday asked us to go back to a wine we drank back in the day. So, I’m thinking early 1990s, on a trip to visit my dear friend Bernadette out in San José. I saw her a few times when she lived there, and we always fit in a trip to Napa or Sonoma. Living in California, she got into wine before I did, and I was impressed when she and her husband would talk about the Chardonnay they were pouring with dinner in their little house with the lime trees in the back.
Gallo was still one of the biggest names in wine, and our excursions often included visiting their tasting room, which was large, impressive, and ready to welcome busloads of tourists. In those early days, learning about wine was new and exciting, and to my young mind, it reeked of a sophistication I was yearning to have.
So for this month, I picked up a Gallo Chardonnay. This one was the 2005 Sonoma Reserve. The front of the bottle includes four little gold medal seals, and the back label talks about the fact that Gallo has won Winery of the Year multiple times.
Gallo is a name I avoid in wine stores, not because I don’t think they can’t make decent wines now, but because of bad associations with the large jug of Hearty Burgundy that I often saw poured at my Italian family dinners. The jug packaging, the false use of a French appellation, it all adds up to bad memories of American wine making.
But I keep an open mind as I pour this wine, which has a pleasing light gold color. I get full-on fruit at the nose, mostly yellow apples and over-ripe cantaloupe. The taste continues with lots of fruit, but there’s a fair share of oak—although not nearly as heavy- handed as I was expecting. The oak somewhat flattens the fruit flavors without really enhancing them. The bottom line was this was a very fruity chard, 13.9% alcohol (what did they do to get it below 14, I wonder?), which, according to the label, was aged partially in French and American oak. I prefer a dry Chard—give me a Chablis or Macon--or, if oak is involved, yes, I’ll take a Burgundy style, thank you very much. So, the style was not my preference. It is a pleasing wine, though, nothing really offensive (except perhaps the over-ripe quality), and, when all is said and done, I’m sure that many people would like it very much. So, thanks to Lenn for suggesting a trip back in time. The wine was o.k., but the memories were much better.

Pouilly Travels--Part Deux

Last spring I traveled to the land of Pouilly-Fuissé. The wine is grown in the southern reaches of Burgundy, where the unoaked chardonnays are dry as a bone. I even stayed in the village at the Bergerie Fuissé, a bucolic B& B that faces a hillside of chardonnay vines and has beautiful white hens prancing in the yard.
In a few weeks, I’ll be in the land of the other Pouilly—-Pouilly Fumé, the world-famous Sauvignon Blanc grown in the Loire Valley west of Paris. Long before wine lovers ever heard of Marlborough, NZ, Pouilly Fumé was the measure of a Sauvignon Blanc--fresh with a bracing minerality. It was the first SB I had ever tried and I immediately fell in love with it. I do enjoy those new world SBs, too, with all that grapefruit and fresh cut grass, but they can sometimes seem disorganized and all over the place in their flavor profile. A little too herbaceous, a little too over-the-top citrus. That’s never a concern with Pouilly Fumé—it’s always an elegant expression of this very expressive grape.